An open collection of baseball's little-known records and curiosities.

"He would have been among the league leaders in batting average for a majority of the season had he had enough plate appearances." -- 2008 St. Louis Cardinals Media Guide about non-roster invitee Mark Johnson

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

One of the cool things about Baseball-Reference's search function is you can look for nicknames as well as given names. Apropos of Halloween, I decided to look up "ghost" and see what happened. It turns out that only one player in major league history had a nickname with "Ghost" in it, and he's already been mentioned on this site.

Jo-Jo Moore, a New York Giants outfielder from 1930-1941, was nicknamed "The Gause Ghost." He came from Gause, Texas, so the origin of part of the nickname is obvious. I don't know where the ghost part comes from, but his BR Bullpen (Baseball-Reference's wiki) page states:

Moore was known to be a first-ball hitter, and some opposing managers would fine their pitchers if they threw Moore a strike on the first pitch.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

This post is similar to the previous one but rather than looking for players with no decisions, its focus is players with zero career wins. Some of the names overlap, but there's been a fair amount of winless pitchers to throw in a lot of games. Of the 2,408 pitchers with zero career wins, there are twenty-two that have appeared in forty or more games. A number of these guys are still active, so the list will be fluid next season.

With that in mind, here are the winless wonders. As with yesterday, active pitchers are bolded:

Name

Games

Innings

Losses

(L/R)HP

Ed Olwine

80

89.2

1

LHP

Juan Alvarez

80

60.1

5

LHP

Chris Britton

63

66.1

3

RHP

Franquelis Osoria

61

75.2

6

RHP

Erik Plantenberg

61

42.1

0

LHP

Terry Felton

55

138.1

16

RHP

Frank Fanovich

55

105.0

5

LHP

Rob Mallicoat

51

53.2

2

LHP

Jeff Kaiser

50

52.0

2

LHP

Ross Powell

48

53.1

5

LHP

Mike Kinnunen

48

51.2

0

LHP

Bob Moorhead

47

119.2

3

RHP

John Lamb

47

66.1

2

RHP

Erik Schullstrom

46

60.0

0

RHP

Mike Burns

45

52.0

0

RHP

Steve Sinclair

45

34.1

3

LHP

Marcos Carvajal

42

57.0

2

RHP

Scott Forster

42

32.0

1

LHP

Brad Voyles

40

68.1

4

RHP

Ron Tompkins

40

50.0

2

RHP

Carmen Cali

40

34.1

1

LHP

Chad Bentz

40

29.2

3

LHP

Though I didn't bold his name Chad Bentz pitched this season for the Bridgeport Bluefish, an independent league team featuring other ex-major leaguers like Quinton McCracken, Brian Boehringer, and Matt Perisho, among others. It's not inconceivable that he'd be able to catch on again in some team's minor league system and the fact he's lefthanded makes it that much more probable.

Another interesting name is Terry Felton. Despite support from Brooks Robinson, Felton was released after going 0-13 for the Twins in 1982. He never appeared in the majors again and holds both the record for most career losses without a win with 16 (Steve Gerkin and Charlie Stecher are the only winless others to lose as many as ten) and the record for most losses in a season without a win with 13.

There have been thirty-one pitchers in baseball history to appear in 20+ games without moving their career record off 0-0. Overall, 1,417 pitchers have appeared in at least one game without a career decision.

UPDATE (2/11/13): There are now 35 pitchers who have appeared in 20+ games without a decision. The table below has been updated through 2012. The active contenders (pitched in majors or minors in 2012) are bolded:

Name

Games

Innings

(L/R)HP

Erik Plantenberg

61

42.1

LHP

Mike Kinnunen

48

51.2

LHP

Erik Schullstrom

46

60.0

RHP

Greg Jones

38

47.2

RHP

Allen McDill

38

34.2

LHP

Tom Qualters

34

52.2

RHP

Mike Neu

33

46.0

RHP

Dae-Sung Koo

33

23.0

LHP

Harry Shuman

30

50.2

RHP

Dustin Richardson

29

16.1

LHP

Mike Hinckley

28

23.1

RHP

Scott Watkins

27

21.2

LHP

Eulogio de la Cruz

27

32.0

RHP

Don Rowe

26

54.2

LHP

Wayne Schurr

26

48.1

RHP

Tim Kubinski

25

25.0

LHP

Roberto Vargas

25

24.2

LHP

Ron Diorio

25

20.1

RHP

John Anderson

24

44.2

RHP

Lee Hancock

24

32.1

LHP

Brad Boxberger

24

27.2

RHP

Jose Valdez

24

26.0

RHP

Norm McRae

22

34.1

RHP

Jose Cecena

22

26.1

RHP

Chris Hatcher

22

25.0

RHP

David Sanders

22

24.0

LHP

Rick Kester

21

40.2

RHP

Doug Piatt

21

34.2

RHP

Jim Morris

21

15.0

LHP

Takahito Nomura

21

13.2

LHP

Rommie Lewis

22

23.2

LHP

Lester Oliveros

22

23.0

RHP

Aaron Taylor

20

21.1

RHP

Reynaldo Garcia

20

20.0

RHP

Kevin Tolar

20

17.2

LHP

I wonder if Erik Plantenburg knows he set a major league record during his career? Speaking of Erik's, it's kind of weird that both the LHP and RHP records for career decisionless games were set by guys with the first name Erik. There have only been nine major league players (seven pitchers) named Erik, so that's almost unbelievable.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

In 2007, forty-three pitchers allowed 200 or more hits while on the mound. Eighteen of them had fewer than 200 innings pitched. David Wells had the lowest IP total, giving up 201 hits in 157 1/3 innings for San Diego and Los Angeles. He managed to avoid having the highest H/9 IP total of the forty-three, as his 11.50 was edged out by Scott Olsen (226 hits in 176 2/3 IP => 11.51 H/9 IP).

Forgetting about the H/9 IP numbers for now, I was curious to find out which pitcher gave up more than two hundred hits in the fewest innings pitched. I looked at the years 1901-2007 in order to avoid the myriad rule changes and schedule havoc of the nineteenth century. Twenty-six pitchers since 1901 have given up over 200 hits in less than 160 innings. Here they are, for your reading pleasure:

Name

Season

Hits

Innings

Jack Knight

1926

206

142.2

Dick Coffman

1935

206

143.2

Jim Walkup

1937

218

150.1

Jack Russell

1932

207

152.2

Claude Willoughby

1930

241

153.0

Dennis Martinez

1983

209

153.0

Dutch Henry

1930

211

155.0

Lefty Weinert

1923

207

156.0

Joe Mays

2005

203

156.0

Ernie Wingard

1927

213

156.1

Jeff Fassero

1999

208

156.1

Whitey Glazner

1924

210

156.2

Bill Trotter

1939

205

156.2

Clise Dudley

1929

202

156.2

Jack Bentley

1925

200

157.0

Herb Pennock

1929

205

157.1

David Wells

2007

201

157.1

Jesse Barnes

1926

204

158.0

Jake Miller

1928

203

158.0

Mark Hendrickson

2003

207

158.1

Ed Whitson

1985

201

158.2

Chubby Dean

1940

220

159.1

Jeff Weaver

2003

211

159.1

Huck Betts

1935

213

159.2

Mike Paxton

1979

210

159.2

Jaime Navarro

1999

206

159.2

Unsurprisingly, almost all of these seasons took place during the two most batter-friendly eras in baseball history: the 1920's-1930's and the late 1990's through today.

I didn't list them all, obviously, but a pitcher gave up 200+ hits in less than 200 IP 701 times since 1901. There have been 4,588 total 200+ hits allowed seasons since the AL came into existence that year.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

This is pretty out there, but I figured I'd try and take a look at starting pitchers who didn't strike out many batters. I figured the easiest way to do this was to examine pitchers qualifying for the ERA title. For those unfamiliar with Rule 10.22(b) of the Official Rules, which establishes the minimums for individual pitching champions, a pitcher must throw "at least as many innings in league championship games as the number of games scheduled for each club in his club’s league that season." Thus in most seasons, the minimum is 162 innings. I'm not sure if this is what MLB does, but Baseball-Reference.com has its own method for determining the minimum requirement in strike years (i.e., 1981 & 1994). That site uses the average number of games played by teams in the league during that season.

I also only looked at seasons since 1961. Those familiar with baseball history will note that was the first year of expansion. I wanted to keep a sense of the "modern game" (as in lots of strikeouts) in the list and by going further back in history, the top of the list becomesclogged with guys from the 1940's and 1950's. I guess it's kind of arbitrary but I think that's alright. After all, it saves the lowest SO/9 figures from 1940-1959 as an entry for a rainy day. :)

To recap, the qualifiers are that the pitcher must have qualified for the ERA title in a season since 1961 to make the list. I included ERA for fun to see if the fact they didn't strike many batters out impacted their overall line. Most of the pitchers on the list had quite good ERA's. Here are the twenty-four seasons with 2.50 SO/9 or below:

Name

Year

IP

SO

SO/9

ERA

Nate Cornejo

2003

194.7

46

2.13

4.67

Ross Grimsley

1977

218.3

53

2.18

3.96

Steve Kline

1972

236.3

58

2.21

2.40

Bill Lee

1978

177.0

44

2.24

3.46

Ed Lynch

1983

174.7

44

2.27

4.28

Clyde Wright

1973

257.0

65

2.28

3.68

Mike Caldwell

1983

228.3

58

2.29

4.53

Tommy John

1984

181.3

47

2.33

4.52

Bob Stanley

1979

216.7

56

2.33

3.99

Paul Splittorff

1980

204.0

53

2.34

4.15

Bill Lee

1979

222.0

59

2.39

3.04

Lary Sorensen

1979

235.3

63

2.41

3.98

Ken Holtzman

1976

246.7

66

2.41

3.65

Bill Swift

1988

174.7

47

2.42

4.59

Glenn Abbott

1981

130.3

35

2.42

3.94

Paul Hartzell

1979

163.0

44

2.43

5.36

Jim Barr

1979

163.0

44

2.43

3.53

Dave Rozema

1978

209.3

57

2.45

3.14

Mike Flanagan

1989

171.7

47

2.46

3.93

Jim Palmer

1981

127.3

35

2.47

3.75

Lary Sorensen

1980

195.7

54

2.48

3.68

Clyde Wright

1974

232.0

64

2.48

4.42

Tommy John

1983

234.7

65

2.49

4.33

Lary Sorensen

1978

280.7

78

2.50

3.21

I wonder if Nate Cornejo realized he did something that hadn't been done for 14 years (Flanagan's 1989 was the second most recent season on the list). To put his numbers in more context with recent baseball history, only four other qualifying pitchers had less than 3.00 SO/9 since 1990: Bill Gullickson (2.60, 1992), Kirk Rueter (2.65, 2004), Ricky Bones (2.78, 1993), and Mark Knudson (2.99, 1990). Note that 1,456 seasons qualifying for ERA titles have been recorded in that time.

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

I meant to post this yesterday but was attacked by some computer gremlins. Now that they're taken care of I want to turn attention to designated hitters who weren't good at hitting for power. A number of the guys on the lowest batting average and lowest on base percentage lists kept their jobs because they were capable of mashing the ball. By looking at the lowest slugging percentages, we should be able to find the designated hitters that were, essentially, slap hitters.

I'm going to make this a pretty long list, simply because giving the lowest thirty seasons for slugging percentage also gives you all the seasons of .400 or below. (EDIT: After reading the comments on the link Baseball Think Factory gave this entry, I realized I forgot to detail qualifiers for the list. The following are players who appeared in at least 75% of their games on the season as a designated hitter according to the B-R Play Index. Sorry for the confusion.):

Ken Singleton, 1984, .289

Carlos May, 1976, .333

Mitchell Page, 1979, .335

Alvin Davis, 1991, .335

Billy Williams, 1976, .339

Hank Aaron, 1975, .355

Tommy Davis, 1975, .357

George Bell, 1993, .363

Greg Luzinski, 1984, .364

Dave Parker, 1991, .365

Gates Brown, 1973, .366

Reggie Jefferson, 1993, .372

Tommy Davis, 1974, .377

Tony Oliva, 1975, .378

Ken Singleton, 1982, .381

Paul Molitor, 1998, .382

Edgar Martinez, 2004, .385

Jeff Burroughs, 1983, .387

Al Kaline, 1974, .389

Willie Horton, 1978, .389

Rico Carty, 1979, .390

Dwight Evans, 1990, .391

Harold Baines, 1992, .391

Tommy Davis, 1973, .391

Andre Thornton, 1986, .392

Don Baylor, 1987, .392

Jose Vidro, 2007, .394

Hal McRae, 1981, .396

George Brett, 1992, .397

Deron Johnson, 1973, .400

It's not altogether surprising so many of these seasons took place in the 1970's and 1980's. Slugging percentage league-wide was lower than fans today are accustomed to: in the first ten seasons of the DH, AL slugging percentage topped .400 all of three times. The AL slugging percentage hasn't dropped below .400 since 1992. That makes Seattle special in a dubious way; the Mariners are the only team to have a full-time DH since 2000 make the list, and they did it twice (Martinez in 2004 and Vidro in 2007)!

Regardless of the time he played in, Ken Singleton's all-time low mark is perversely impressive. It's hard to slug .289 and get 400 PA in a season, much less without playing impressive defense to back it up. Opening the search to all positions since 1973, only 144 players amassed 400+ PA in a season while slugging lower than .300. They were preponderantly shortstops, with the rest mainly second basemen and catchers. To show how rare it is, consider that 6,614 seasons of 400+ PA have been recorded since 1973. In either case, rare or not, the fact the second-lowest finisher had a .333 slugging percentage makes Singleton's mark stand out even more. I would say he holds one of the esoteric "unbreakable" records.

Monday, October 22, 2007

This is along the same lines as the last post, only now I'm using on base percentage because it's a better measure of how a player avoids making outs. The restrictions are the same: 400+ PA and 75+% of games as a DH.

For fun, I'll list the top (bottom?) twenty seasons:

George Bell, 1993, .243

Dave Kingman, 1986, .255

Ken Singleton, 1984, .286

Lee May, 1978, .286

Dave Parker, 1991, .288

George Bell, 1992, .294

Lee May, 1979, .297

Alvin Davis, 1991, .299

Reggie Jackson, 1984, .300

Jeffrey Leonard, 1989, .301

Eddie Murray, 1994, .302

Willie Horton, 1978, .303

Andre Thornton, 1985, .304

Josh Phelps, 2004, .304

Dave Parker, 1989, .308

Dave Kingman, 1985, .309

Reggie Jefferson, 1993, .310

Sammy Sosa, 2007, .311

Carl Everett, 2005, .311

George Brett, 1993, .312

George Bell and Lee May are the only two players in MLB history to post an OBP under .300 in more than one season as a full-time DH.

Saturday, October 20, 2007

This was the idea that led to my long post about designated hitters. I wanted to see which players at an offensive position had managed to put up the worst batting averages in a single season. Certainly batting average is not the best way to measure a player's offense but it's fun to see guys with low averages (so long as their not on your team, I suppose).

Baseball-Reference's Play Index doesn't separate statistics from a season into statistics by position, so in order to get full-time DH's I merely had it look for players that spent 75% or more of their games played at DH. I may have missed a couple players, but when coupled with the 400 PA qualifier, the 75% restriction means I should have caught all the guys whose role was to fill the DH slot pretty much every night.

Here are the ten seasons by designated hitters with averages at .230 or below:

Dave Kingman, 1986, .210

Billy Williams, 1976, .211

Gorman Thomas, 1985, .215

Ken Singleton, 1984, .215

Jonny Gomes, 2006, .216

George Bell, 1993, .217

Alvin Davis, 1991, .221

Reggie Jackson, 1984, .223

Greg Vaughn, 1995, .224

Andre Thornton, 1986, .229

The highest OPS put up by any of those guys was .780 by Gorman Thomas. Ken Singleton had the only sub-.600 season, winding up with .575.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

I don't know about you, but whenever I picture a designated hitter, it's a thunderfooted, lumbering, home run masher. David Ortiz plays well into the conventional thinking of a quality DH. The thing is, however, not all DH's are home run hitters. In fact, especially on bad teams, many times the DH is just whatever position player on the team needed a day off defensively. To wit, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays this year used 13 different designated hitters, with Greg Norton leading all players with 46 starts.

In order to try and verify the perception of designated hitters as pure mashers, I decided to use the league splits (Example: 2007 Major League splits) at Baseball-Reference.com to get data on DH performance since the DH rule was enacted in 1973. Since National League teams don't have to plan a roster spot for the designated hitter, I decided only to look at American League numbers. Since the advent of interleague play, the non-DH numbers are slightly skewed due to pitchers batting, but the effect shouldn't be too drastic.

First, let's look at the traditional, though flawed, measure of batting average to compare designated hitters to the rest of the league:

(click image to enlarge)

Alright, so we can see that traditionally designated hitters hit for a lower average than the rest of their AL counterparts. This seems to support the idea that DH's aim to hit for power rather than average. Note the sharp dropoff in 1985; this isn't the last time we'll note that particular season.

Now let's turn our attention to a hitter's main goal: avoiding outs. On Base Percentage helps us here, as it's a measure of a player's ability to, well, get on base and avoid outs.

(click image to enlarge)

Here we can see that designated hitters generally have been better at getting on base than the rest of the AL. This is especially apparent in the mid-to-late 1990's. Interestingly, for the first decade after the DH rule took effect the players in the DH role did not really distinguish themselves from the rest of the league. This graph also shows the mysterious dip in 1985.

So designated hitters get on base more than the rest of the league. Woohoo. If they really are so good at driving the ball, it should show up in their slugging percentages. Let's take a look:

(click image to enlarge)

So, every year since 1973 has seen slugging percentages by DH at least equal to the rest of the league. In many cases, designated hitters slugged much better than the rest of the league. It's beginning to become repetitive, but the one season the rest of the league caught up to their DH's was...1985! This chart confirms the idea of designated hitters being better than average at mashing the ball. In fact, the last two charts show the overall superiority of players used as DH's at hitting in general. Using OPS, or On Base plus Slugging, a metric giving a quick-and-dirty yet useful approximation of a hitter's value, we can see the value of designated hitters.

(click image to enlarge)

As we can see, and as we gathered from the last two charts, designated hitters have a higher OPS than the rest of the league virtually every season. The only expection, obviously, was 1985. What exactly went on that year, anyway?

Baseball-Reference also has an interesting split statistic called tOPS+. This statistic compares how DH's compare to the numbers for the whole league. Anything over 100 means they were better than the rest of the league in terms of OPS, while anything less than 100 means they were worse. You might say this chart is a re-hashing of the last one, but it gives an impression of the degree to which DH's were better than the rest of the league. Finally, tOPS+ has a pretty simple formula for this chart: 100*((DH_OBP/AL_OBP) + (DH_SLG/AL_SLG) - 1).

(click image to enlarge)

It turns out that ever since roughly 1991 those DH's have been much better than the rest of the league. The expansion year (for the NL) in 1993 saw a dip in DH dominance, but other than that the designated hitters have exceeded 110 every season. Who could have figured that 1985 was the only year since 1973 that DH's were worse than the rest of the league? Anyone?

To recap, we've determined that DH's generally hit for worse average (swinging for the fences?), get on base more (walked because they represent a power threat?), slug better, and put up higher OPS numbers than the rest of the league. If they truly are swinging for the fences because they're home run hitters, might it show up in their strikeout percentage (strikeouts over at bats)? I think it might, but let's appeal to the chart:

(click image to enlarge)

Well, well, well, it turns out these guys are free swingers. While strikeout percentage overall has gone up since 1973, it's gone up faster for designated hitters. For the last dozen years, one out of every five at bats by a designated hitter has been a strikeout (as opposed to two out of eleven for the rest of the league). Pretty neat stuff.

Finally, there's one more statistic that might tell us whether designated hitters are swinging for the fences. I'm referring to home run percentage, or home runs over at bats. This should give us a final clue to the power displayed by designated hitters. Here we go:

(click image to enlarge)

So, perhaps obviously, it turns out that designated hitters do hit home runs at a higher percentage than the rest of the league. Just eyeballing it, it seems as though the HR% for the average DH is 4/3 that of another average position player. That's pretty cool.

I may have just spent a significant amount of time telling the world what it already knew: designated hitters are better hitters than the rest of the American League. It took some time for patience and/or other on-base skills to develop, but the slugging percentage, strikeouts and home runs were always there. If nothing else, I hope this lengthy post brought the fact designated hitters in 1985 suffered a dip in numbers compared to the rest of the league. I'm not really sure why that is, but in hopes someone sees something, I'll list below the batting lines for every player to spend 50 or more games at DH in 1985. Thanks for reading this marathon entry!

Name

Age

Team

G

AVG

OBP

SLG

OPS

Ron Kittle

27

CHW

57

.250

.305

.526

.831

Hal McRae

39

KCR

105

.264

.355

.459

.814

Jeff Burroughs

34

TOR

74

.267

.377

.433

.810

Gorman Thomas

34

SEA

133

.215

.330

.451

.781

Don Baylor

36

NYY

140

.232

.332

.432

.764

Cliff Johnson

37

TEX

103

.264

.337

.425

.762

Larry Sheets

25

BAL

93

.262

.323

.418

.741

Mike Easler

34

BOS

130

.259

.320

.411

.731

Reggie Jackson

39

CAL

52

.196

.335

.387

.722

Roy Smalley

32

MIN

56

.244

.348

.372

.720

Ted Simmons

35

MIL

99

.265

.325

.390

.715

Dave Kingman

36

OAK

149

.233

.301

.404

.705

Andre Thornton

35

CLE

122

.235

.301

.400

.701

Jorge Orta

34

KCR

85

.263

.310

.384

.694

Al Oliver

38

TOR

59

.253

.276

.376

.652

Len Matuszek

30

TOR

52

.220

.265

.319

.584

The only thing that struck me as curious was Reggie Jackson's bizarre split as RF/DH (.286/.378/.555 in 325 PA vs. .196/.335/.387 in 206 PA). He spent slightly more time as a designated hitter late in the season but overall his starts are pretty mixed up.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Quick! Name the nine players to record 20+ saves in the first season of their career! A hint: they all debuted after 1960. Okay, maybe that's not a real hint, but saves are a more recent phenomenon in baseball history. Generally veteran relievers are given the first crack at being the closer for a team but every once in a while a rookie gets the call. Here are the aforementioned nine 20+ saves first season players:

Kazuhiro Sasaki, 37, 2000 Seattle Mariners

Billy Koch, 31, 1999 Toronto Blue Jays

Takashi Saito, 24, 2006 Los Angeles Dodgers

Dick Radatz, 24, 1962 Boston Red Sox

Huston Street, 23, 2005 Oakland Athletics

Doug Corbett, 23, 1980 Minnesota Twins

Ken Tatum, 22, 1969 California Angels

Salome Barojas, 21, 1982 Chicago White Sox

Doug Bird, 20, 1973 Kansas City Royals

The leader in first-season saves for 2007 was Joakim Soria of the Kansas City Royals with 17. Only five other pitchers recorded one or more: Hideki Okajima (5), Sean Gallagher (1), Edwar Ramirez (1), Joba Chamberlain (1), and Marcus Gwyn (1).

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

EDIT: Upon further review, I don't like the way I originally came about these numbers. For some reason, I had simply averaged each team's FIP in each spot for the league numbers. A smarter way to do it would be to treat the entire league as one giant rotation and determine the top 20% of starts (generally around 518 for the NL and 454 for the AL) for spot #1, etc. It makes no sense to penalize the league average rotation because the top 15 pitchers are clustered on, say, 8 teams. This tends to lower the value for #1 starters and raise the value for #5 starters while leaving the middle guys generally unchanged. I've changed the numbers in the tables to reflect the new method. The "average" rotations at the end are the same as before. Sorry for the mistake.

A few days ago I had a post detailing rotations and average starters in the National League using FIP. Today I want to change gears, take off the beginner-sabermetrician's hat, and return to the commonly cited ERA. I admit, when I hear the phrase, "he's a #4 starter," I quantify that in terms of ERA and I would guess most of you do, too. ERA was the statistic used in the article that started me thinking about this "analysis" and it's common enough that I figured it would be worth a look today. I think the most interesting thing to take away from this exercise is the difference between perception of back of the rotation starters and their actual numbers.

As I did for the FIP table, each rotation spot is figured out the same way for each team (33 starts for #1, then 33, 32, 32, 32). Obviously I use ERA instead of FIP so for the Brewers, the #1 spot calculation looks like:

The columns are similar to my last post: SERA is the cumulative starter ERA for the team and STDEV is the standard deviation of the starting rotation spots. Who would have thought, going into the year, the two NL teams with the most "even" rotations would be Chicago and Milwaukee? Ah, but enough of the preview, take a look at the table:

Team

SERA

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

STDEV

San Diego Padres

4.11

2.54

3.15

4.12

4.62

7.16

1.78

Chicago Cubs

4.19

3.80

3.91

3.95

4.13

5.49

0.70

Arizona Diamondbacks

4.23

3.01

4.08

4.30

4.72

6.48

1.27

San Francisco Giants

4.24

3.38

3.86

4.09

4.47

5.70

0.88

New York Mets

4.40

3.47

3.72

4.05

4.48

6.98

1.42

Los Angeles Dodgers

4.43

3.03

3.58

4.24

5.35

6.63

1.44

Atlanta Braves

4.45

3.11

3.32

4.18

5.52

7.23

1.72

Milwaukee Brewers

4.55

3.46

4.24

4.81

5.16

5.20

0.73

Colorado Rockies

4.58

3.80

4.21

4.33

4.87

6.06

0.87

Houston Astros

4.71

3.21

4.44

4.75

5.26

6.29

1.13

Cincinnati Reds

4.86

3.73

4.21

4.58

5.29

8.08

1.72

Philadelphia Phillies

4.91

3.35

4.22

5.08

5.80

6.61

1.28

Pittsburgh Pirates

5.02

3.76

3.95

5.11

5.85

7.41

1.50

St. Louis Cardinals

5.04

3.57

4.11

4.86

5.69

7.53

1.55

Washington Nationals

5.11

3.56

4.46

4.68

5.77

7.82

1.63

Florida Marlins

5.58

4.64

5.13

5.21

5.81

7.67

1.18

NL

4.64

3.29

3.97

4.50

5.12

7.03

1.43

A #4 starter in the NL this past season would have been above-average if he'd put up a 5.00 ERA. Similarly, a team would have to count its lucky stars if their #5 starter did the same. I mentioned it last time, but this table really points out how hapless Florida's starters were: only 37 starts all year were made by a pitcher ending up with an ERA (as a starter) of 5.00 or under.

As in the FIP post, here are the pitchers who threw ace-level or better in 20 or more starts (~3.46 ERA):

Jake Peavy, 34 starts, 2.54 ERA

Brandon Webb, 34, 3.01

Brad Penny, 33, 3.03

John Smoltz, 32, 3.11

Chris Young, 30, 3.12

Roy Oswalt, 32, 3.19

Tim Hudson, 34, 3.33

Chad Billingsley, 20, 3.38

Cole Hamels, 28, 3.39

Moving on to the #2 starters (~4.04 ERA):

Noah Lowry, 26 starts, 3.92 ERA

Carlos Zambrano, 34, 3.95

Tim Lincecum, 24, 4.00

Aaron Cook, 25, 4.12

FIP liked Lincecum, placing him among the aces, but he slides to #2 status here. You can't be too disappointed for the rookie, though.

Continuing the journey to #3 starters (~4.52 ERA):

Jason Marquis, 33 starts, 4.43 ERA

Tom Glavine, 34, 4.45

Jay Bergmann, 21, 4.45

Barry Zito, 33, 4.55

Justin Germano, 23, 4.56

Wandy Rodriguez, 31, 4.58

It's far too easy, but I'm guessing this is not what the Giants signed Barry Zito for.

Now we're into the hinterlands: #4 starters (~5.17 ERA):

Woody Williams, 31 starts, 5.06 ERA

Jamie Moyer, 32, 5.15

Dontrelle Willis, 35, 5.17

Chris Capuano, 25, 5.20

Dave Bush, 31, 5.20

Not good news for Brewers fans here. At least you can say Moyer and Williams were showing their age, but it's never good when twenty-something starters struggle so much.

The final stop on the ERA track, those disturbingly bad #5 starters (~6.77 ERA). I've got to go down to 15+ starts for this, as most teams won't put up with such mediocrity for long.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Just what you wanted: another post in the "Most X in Final Season" series. This time I'm focusing on saves. I figure good relievers tend to hang on a while and closers generally remain closers until they retire, right?

Turns out this isn't often the case. In baseball history, only eleven men recorded as many as twenty saves in their final season. I suppose that makes sense, considering how many players on the top 100 active players in total saves are no longer closers. Roberto Hernandez, Troy Percival, Jose Mesa, Eddie Guardado, Tom Gordon, Mike Timlin, and Antonio Alfonseca appear in the top twenty alone. Oops, bad call on my part.

Here are the eleven players, with their final season saves totals:

Robb Nen, 43

Jeff Shaw, 43

Tom Henke, 36

Todd Worrell, 35

John Wetteland, 34

Mike Henneman, 31

Rick Aguilera, 29

Steve Olin, 29

Mike Williams, 28

Jeff Zimmerman, 28

Randy Myers, 28

The curious thing to me is how the dropoff from William, Zimmerman and Myers to Rollie Fingers and Russ Christopher (both 17) is so dramatic. Not one single player has recorded 18-27 saves in his final season? Weird.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

In mid-September I wrote about Trever Miller's chase for a season record. At the time, Miller had 74 appearances with a 0-0 record. The previous record for most games in a season without a win or loss had been 48 games pitched by Scott Aldred for the 1998 Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Since the season is over, I thought it made sense to confirm that his final season total of 76 games in the official new record. Interestingly, Manny Delcarmen of the Boston Red Sox placed third on the all-time list by throwing in 44 games this year without a decision. Ron Villone also joined the all-time top ten this year by tying for ninth with 37 "decisionless" appearances.

Friday, October 12, 2007

EDIT: Upon further review, I don't like the way I originally came about these numbers. For some reason, I had simply averaged each team's FIP in each spot for the league numbers. A smarter way to do it would be to treat the entire league as one giant rotation and determine the top 20% of starts (generally around 518 for the NL and 454 for the AL) for spot #1, etc. It makes no sense to penalize the league average rotation because the top 15 pitchers are clustered on, say, 8 teams. This tends to lower the value for #1 starters and raise the value for #5 starters while leaving the middle guys generally unchanged. I've changed the numbers in the tables to reflect the new method. The "average" rotations at the end are the same as before. Sorry for the mistake.

There are a number of different things to get out of the way before the meat and potatoes of this post. Most importantly, the idea for this fun little exercise came from the article "How Good Is Your #4 Starter?" by Jeff Sackmann and the follow-up "More Fun With Rotation Numbers." He used ERA to calculate his numbers and I will have another post soon utilizing ERA. For this post, however, I am using FIP, or Fielding Independent Pitching. FIP attempts to measure a pitcher's worth through the outcomes for which he is directly responsible during a game: home runs, hit batsmen, bases on balls, and strikeouts. In this way, defense largely is taken out of the equation. Thus, FIP is not affected in the same way ERA would be for a pitcher if he had eight David Ortiz's on the field with him.

The formula I use is (HR*13+(BB+HBP)*3-K*2)/IP + 3.2 = FIP. In actuality, the constant should be slightly larger than 3.2, depending on the league, but since I don't know exactly how much larger, I used 3.2 for simplicity's sake. Since it affects everyone in the NL, no one is given an unfair advantage.

In order to determine the numbers for each team's rotation spots, I figured the ideal rotation would give a team 33 starts by their #1 and #2 pitchers and 32 starts by the other three (San Diego and Colorado both had an extra start by their #3 starter for my calculation). Using this idea, I took the weighted average of the team's top 33 starts by FIP to determine the FIP for rotation spot #1, and so on for the other four spots.

Example, to determine the #1 spot for the Brewers, I would see that Yovani Gallardo had 17 starts with a 3.49 FIP, Manny Parra had 2 starts with 3.87 FIP and Ben Sheets had 24 starts with a 4.07 FIP. Sheets' starts are split between the #1 and #2 spot and you get

#1 FIP = (17*3.49+2*3.87+14*4.07)/33 = 3.76

Therefore the Brewers got a 3.76 FIP from their "#1 spot."

The SFIP column stands for "Starter FIP" for each team, i.e., the FIP put up only by starting pitchers in games they started. The NL averages were computed by simply taking the average of each team's FIP in each spot. The NL FIP was computed by applying the FIP formula to the raw numbers of HR, HBP, BB, K and IP throughout the league. The STDEV column is the standard deviation of the team's five rotation spots. The smaller the number, the closer together the five spots are and the more "even" a team's rotation is. This is fallible, in the sense that a team with a great ace will appear to have an uneven rotation even if the #4 and #5 starters really aren't that bad.

Finally, as Jeff said in his follow-up article:

These calculations don't hold the key for any breakthrough new approach to roster construction, but they do illustrate some of the ways in which good (or lucky) teams are different from bad ones.

Now that the explanation is out of the way, on to the table!

Team

SFIP

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

STDEV

San Diego Padres

3.82

2.80

3.38

3.54

4.37

5.67

1.11

Los Angeles Dodgers

4.22

3.59

3.90

4.02

4.37

5.55

0.76

San Francisco Giants

4.28

3.55

3.77

4.43

4.81

5.03

0.64

Milwaukee Brewers

4.36

3.76

4.13

4.37

4.51

5.08

0.49

Chicago Cubs

4.54

4.06

4.26

4.52

4.69

5.32

0.48

Pittsburgh Pirates

4.54

3.91

4.18

4.52

4.76

5.78

0.72

Cincinnati Reds

4.54

3.67

4.45

4.53

4.55

6.29

0.96

Arizona Diamondbacks

4.58

3.19

4.16

4.74

5.34

6.02

1.09

Atlanta Braves

4.59

3.18

3.42

5.17

5.40

6.70

1.47

New York Mets

4.59

3.80

4.29

4.72

4.82

5.54

0.65

Colorado Rockies

4.67

3.96

4.32

4.64

5.07

5.54

0.62

Houston Astros

4.79

3.57

4.21

5.34

5.47

5.61

0.90

Philadelphia Phillies

4.86

3.76

4.58

4.98

5.20

6.11

0.86

St.Louis Cardinals

4.91

3.70

4.76

4.88

5.13

6.42

0.97

Florida Marlins

5.12

4.07

5.05

5.19

5.33

6.17

0.75

Washington Nationals

5.41

4.45

5.15

5.52

5.78

6.43

0.74

NL

4.60

3.48

4.17

4.66

5.04

6.04

0.96

I guess the old adage "pitching wins championships" didn't hold especially true in the NL this year as Chicago and Arizona were the only teams to be much above league average in FIP from their starters and they were still very close to the mean. Another thing I noticed that kind of surprised me was how mediocre Florida's starters were. Granted a team losing 90 games generally won't have very good starters in the first place, but I was shocked to find out they only got 37 starts all season from a pitcher winding up with an ERA below 5.00 as a starter (27 from Sergio Mitre, 6 from Anibal Sanchez and 4 from Ricky Nolasco). Furthermore, they only got 42 starts from a pitcher with an FIP under 5.00. That's perversely impressive.

Regardless, simply seeing the numbers might not strike your fancy. Let's look at which starters came closest to each rotation spot's average, in order to give some context.

First, here are the starters that were "aces" (3.69 or lower FIP) in 20 or more starts:

Jake Peavy, 34 starts, 2.80 FIP

John Smoltz, 32, 3.17

Brandon Webb, 34, 3.20

Chris Young, 30, 3.39

Tim Hudson, 34, 3.42

Greg Maddux, 34, 3.54

Roy Oswalt, 32, 3.55

Brad Penny, 33, 3.59

Tim Lincecum, 24, 3.59

Aaron Harang, 34, 3.67

No real surprises, though it must be unsettling for batters in the NL West to see that rookie Tim Lincecum shows up as an ace already (note: Yovani Gallardo made 17 starts with a 3.49 FIP, so he was good as well).

Let's see who fits the mold as a #2 starter (~4.25 FIP):

Chris Capuano, 25 starts, 4.16 FIP

Tom Gorzelanny, 32, 4.20

Rich Hill, 32, 4.28

Oliver Perez, 28, 4.30

It's tough for a Brewers fan to see that Capuano was actually better than an average #2 starter by FIP, but there it is. His struggles could very possibly be a combination of bad luck and poor defense behind him inflating his numbers. Regardless, the other names on the list are not very surprising as all three pitchers had good seasons.

Our #3 starters (~4.69 FIP):

Paul Maholm, 29 starts, 4.56 FIP (everyone between Maholm and Davis had less than 20 starts)

Doug Davis, 33, 4.68 FIP

Micah Owings, 27, 4.78

Braden Looper, 30, 4.79

Doug Davis nailed the middle-of-the-rotation niche and it makes sense. He eats innings and nibbles too much on the corners to be good, but he gets the job done most nights.

Alright, we're headed to the back half of the rotation. The #4 starters (~4.98 FIP):

Jason Marquis, 33 starts, 4.94 FIP

Jamie Moyer, 32, 5.00

Anthony Reyes, 20, 5.02

Dontrelle Willis, 35, 5.09

Jason Marquis has always been kind of middling. Moyer gave you about what you could expect from a 44-year-old soft-tosser. Reyes is young and struggling, while Willis continued sliding further from the dominance he showed in 2005. Is he sick of playing in Florida or is his delivery no longer fooling hitters the way it did?

Finally, we've reached the land of the damned--er, I mean the #5 starters (~5.83 FIP):

Livan Hernandez, 33 starts, 5.73 FIP

Byung-Hyun Kim, 22, 5.76

Adam Eaton, 30, 5.93

Mike Bacsik, 20, 6.38

Unsurprisingly, not many pitchers this bad made more than 20 starts. Other than Bacsik, only Joel Hanrahan (11) and Jo-Jo Reyes (10) reached double-digits for starts with an FIP over 6.00. Tim Stauffer had the worst FIP, putting up a 12.85 in 7 2/3 IP in his two starts for the Padres. Five HR, 6 BB, 6 K and an HBP will do that to a pitcher. Wilfredo Ledezma and J.A. Happ also scored above 10.

To recap, the National League average rotation would look like this:

Aaron Harang

Rich Hill

Doug Davis

Jamie Moyer

Byung-Hyun Kim/Adam Eaton

The Mets' rotation was pretty close to league average across the board, as well.

I'll be putting up a similar post using ERA soon. I think this sort of number-crunching is interesting, if not especially useful.

Regular readers may remember my post of August 21 in which I listed the thirteen three-inning saves (see Rule 10.19(d)(3)) of the season to that point. I figured I should update the list to reflect the three such saves after that date.

The full list of three-inning saves in 2007:

Kevin Gregg, 4/22, Florida vs. Washington

Brandon Duckworth, 4/28, Kansas City at Seattle

Willie Eyre, 5/4, Texas vs. Toronto

Aquilino Lopez, 5/12, Detroit at Minnesota

Brian Shouse, 6/15, Milwaukee at Minnesota

Chad Durbin, 6/24, Detroit at Atlanta

Ryan Madson, 7/8, Philadelphia at Colorado

Ron Mahay, 7/17, Texas at Oakland

Sean Gallagher, 7/18, Chicago vs. San Francisco (4 innings)

Matt Wise, 7/19, Milwaukee vs. Arizona

Joel Peralta, 7/29, Kansas City vs. Texas

J.D. Durbin, 8/7, Philadelphia vs. Florida

Carlos Villanueva, 8/20, Milwaukee at Arizona

Marcus Gwyn, 8/21, Los Angeles (AL) vs. New York (AL)

Wes Littleton, 8/22 (Game 1), Texas at Baltimore

John Ennis, 8/26, Philadelphia vs. San Diego

If you're interested, I saved the Play Index report listing every three (or more) inning save since Opening Day 2000. You can see it here.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

In 2007, three pitchers gave up 100 or more walks (two were Daniel Cabrera and Carlos Zambrano - without looking it up, can you name the last?). Since 1901, 762 individual seasons featured 100+ bases on balls allowed. Only three of these seasons have featured 200 or more walks allowed: Bob Feller's 1938 and Nolan Ryan's 1974 and 1977. I was curious about who held the record for most 100+ BB seasons in a career, so I looked it up.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

In keeping with the final season theme but returning to the mound, I took a look at pitchers' strikeouts in their last year. Only one hurler topped 200 strikeouts in his final season and he managed to get past 300 as well (he had almost twice the K's of the second place guy!). He, of course, was Sandy Koufax. Looking at the rest of the list, only ten players struck out 120 or more their last year, and only thirty-seven passed the century mark.

The list of those with 120+ K:

Sandy Koufax, 1966, 317

Chuck Finley, 2002, 174

Britt Burns, 1985, 172

Kevin Tapani, 2001, 149

Mike Sirotka, 2000, 128

Lefty Williams, 1920, 128

Larry Jackson, 1968, 127

Pete Dowling, 1901, 124

Ramon Garcia, 1997, 120

John ":-)" Smiley, 1997, 120

Fun Fact: Baseball-Reference.com lists Pete Dowling's age in 1901 as 99. He must be the definition of "ageless lefty."

Here are the older-than-35 players to strike out more than 100 (a nice round number) K in 2007:

John Smoltz (40) - 197

Andy Pettitte (35) - 141

Jamie Moyer (44) - 133

Miguel Batista (36) - 133

Orlando Hernandez (41) - 128

Jose Contreras (35) - 113

Tim Wakefield (40) - 110

Greg Maddux (41) - 104

Curt Schilling (40) - 101

Woody Williams (40) - 101

Bonus Fun Fact: Sixty-six pitchers age 35 or older struck out at least one batter this season.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Whatever your feelings are regarding RBI as a tool for judging players, you have to appreciate players that are put in the position to knock in baserunners and deliver often. While it's true certain players put up gaudy RBI totals without getting on base, more often than not players with high RBI totals aren't terrible.

To keep with the theme of the two posts prior to yesterday's, here are the only fourteen players with 80 or more RBI in their last season:

Dave Orr, 1890, 124

Joe Jackson, 1920, 121

Happy Felsch, 1920, 115

Albert Belle, 2000, 103

Kirby Puckett, 1995, 99

Dave Kingman, 1986, 94

Joe Wood, 1922, 92

Bill Joyce, 1898, 91

Ecky Stearns, 1889, 87

Charlie Ferguson, 1887, 85

Perry Werden, 1897, 83

Ed Konetchy, 1921, 82

Rebel Oakes, 1915, 82

Jack O'Brien, 1890, 80

Eight of the players had their final season in the twentieth century, though two of those (Jackson and Felsch) were banned from baseball in their prime. Only 228 players in baseball history collected as many as 50 RBI in their final season.

Monday, October 8, 2007

I've always kind of liked these guys: players with batting averages very close to their on base percentages. I wouldn't want them on my team necessarily, but I enjoy their inability or unwillingness to take walks.

With that in mind, I looked up the top batting averages in a single season (since 1871) with 400+ PA (to allow for catchers not playing every day) and an on base percentage under .300. Only those seasons featuring batting averages over .275 are listed (22 of 1,959):

Name

Season

AVG

OBP

Charlie Carr

1903

.281

.296

Ivan Rodriguez

2007

.281

.294

Harry Swacina

1914

.280

.297

Dave Foutz

1886

.280

.297

Ozzie Guillen

1993

.280

.292

Don Kolloway

1946

.280

.293

Johnny Estrada

2007

.278

.296

Damaso Garcia

1980

.278

.296

Joe Hornung

1883

.278

.291

Hal Chase

1917

.277

.296

Wayne Nordhagen

1980

.277

.294

Hick Carpenter

1885

.277

.295

Tom Burns

1886

.276

.298

Ron Coomer

1998

.276

.295

Ivan Rodriguez

2005

.276

.290

George Wright

1879

.276

.299

Brian Hunter

1996

.276

.297

Bengie Molina

2007

.276

.298

Rafael Ramirez

1988

.276

.298

Larry Bowa

1974

.275

.298

Jerry Denny

1883

.275

.291

Bill Buckner

1973

.275

.297

I find it interesting three 2007 catchers (Rodriguez, Estrada, and Bengie Molina) made it onto the list.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Given that home runs have increased since the 19th century, unlike wins by a single pitcher, this record applies to all of baseball history. After looking at pitching wins, I wanted to look at the most proficient final-season home run hitters. Only twelve players have ever hit more than twenty home runs in their final season. Here's the list:

Dave Kingman, 1986, 35

Mark McGwire, 2001, 29

Ted Williams, 1960, 29

Hank Greenberg, 1947, 25

Jack Graham, 1949, 24

Roy Cullenbine, 1947, 24

Albert Belle, 2000, 23

Kirby Puckett, 1995, 23

Phil Nevin, 2006, 22

Paul O'Neill, 2001, 21

Will Clark, 2000, 21

Dave Nilsson, 1999, 21

Ted Williams was the only player on the list over 40 (he was 41) and Dave Nilsson was the only player under 30 (he was 29). The average age of the players was 35.2. Will Clark and Phil Nevin were the only two on the list to play for more than one team in their last year.

Here's the players age 35 or older in 2007 to hit 20+ home runs:

Jim Thome (36 years old) - 35

Ken Griffey (37) - 30

Chipper Jones (35) - 29

Barry Bonds (42) - 28

Frank Thomas (39) - 26

Gary Sheffield (38) - 25

Carlos Delgado (35) - 24

Raul Ibanez (35) - 21

Sammy Sosa (38) - 21

Matt Stairs (39) - 21

Jeff Kent (39) - 20

Manny Ramirez (35) - 20

Jorge Posada (35) - 20

I don't know if any of them will retire this offseason, but they'd obviously join the list if they do.

Friday, October 5, 2007

I was playing a historical baseball game today and came across a pitcher named Britt Burns. He threw for the White Sox in the 1980's until traded at the age of 26 to the New York Yankees. Before he threw a pitch in the Big Apple, a chronic hip condition forced him into retirement. In 1985, his final season, he recorded 18 wins. That made me curious as to what pitchers put up the most wins all-time in their final seasons.

Here's the list of all the guys to put up 15 wins or more in their last season:

Sandy Koufax, 1966, 27

Lefty Williams, 1920, 22

Henry Schmidt, 1903, 22

Eddie Cicotte, 1920, 21

Britt Burns, 1985, 18

Chief Johnson, 1915, 17

Paul Derringer, 1945, 16

Hugh Bedient, 1915, 16

Ed Doheny, 1903, 16

Ted Lewis, 1901, 16

Mike Sirotka, 2000, 15

Larry French, 1942, 15

Monty Stratton, 1938, 15

George Kaiserling, 1915, 15

Jay Hughes, 1902, 15

Win Mercer, 1902, 15

Lefty Williams and Eddie Cicotte were two of the infamous Black Sox. Henry Schmidt came to Brooklyn from the Pacific Coast League in 1903 and after his 22-win season decided he didn't like life east of the Mississippi. He packed his bags, headed west, and never threw a pitch in the major leagues again. His 22 wins place him tied for fifth among first-season pitchers since 1901 so I guess he's the only guy to appear in the top 5 for most wins in both his first and last season.

I think Ron Darling is growing on me. I usually tune out announcers, but I find his ability to refer to baseball in the terms of the mid-1990's (California Angels, Mile High Stadium, etc.) charming. That said, if he's done with TBS come the end of the Cubs-Diamondbacks series, I won't be upset.

As for this blog, I've got a few ideas based on things I've already posted that I will be compiling and writing about. I'm not sure exactly when they'll be ready, but soon. I've also got a couple of ideas for regular posts, so those will be up shortly. I'm getting things organized and I should have regular updates again soon. In the meantime, if you're interested in the Brewers' won-loss record broken down in far too many ways, check out my recent diary on Brew Crew Ball.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Anyone watching the Cubs-Diamondbacks game may be familiar with this, but TBS analyst Ron Darling used an interesting analogy in the seventh inning. Describing Carlos Marmol's delivery, he compared its deceptiveness to that of "Frankie Rodriguez, the California Angel." Kind of makes you wonder how much baseball he's watched since his last game in 1995.

The playoffs start today. Woo hoo! Since 1903, 59611 batters have gotten themselves out via strikeout, fly out, ground out, etc. I can only hope the media keeps track of what player makes the coveted 60000th out as a batter.

Who made the first out in the 1903 postseason? That would be Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Ginger Beaumont, flying out to center field on a pitch from Boston ace Cy Young.

Another example of the cool things you can find out via Baseball-Reference's Play Index: The last postseason out made in Polo Grounds history was a fly ball to left field off the bat of Vic Wertz on September 30, 1954.

Here's the last players to make an out for each of this year's playoff teams.

Monday, October 1, 2007

A comment on Brew Crew Ball talking about Joey Gathright made me think of this. The Royals speedster put up a .292 slugging percentage in 445 plate appearances for Tampa Bay and Kansas City in 2006 and I thought it'd be interesting to see who has the record for most plate appearances in a season slugging under .300.

The record is higher than I figured, with nine seasons topping 700 PA:

Sandy Alomar, 1970, .293 SLG, 735 PA

Donie Bush, 1914, .295, 721

Roger Metzger, 1972, .259, 715

Ozzie Smith, 1980, .276, 712

Tom Brown, 1892, .285, 712

Don Kessinger, 1968, .287, 707

Woody Williams, 1944, .289, 707

Ossie Vitt, 1916, .295, 705

Donie Bush, 1915, .283, 703

1,377 players qualified for their league's batting title while slugging under .300. I doubt any won it. Here's another list, this time of the top ten career PA leaders slugging under .300:

Mark Belanger, 1965-1982, 6602 PA, .280 SLG

George McBride, 1901-1920, 6235, .264

Bud Harrelson, 1965-1980, 5516, .288

Sandy Alomar, 1964-1978, 5160, .288

Cub Stricker, 1882-1893, 5083, .294

Al Bridwell, 1905-1915, 4928, .295

Roger Metzger, 1970-1980, 4676, .293

Rabbit Warstler, 1930-1940, 4611, .287

Ossie Vitt, 1912-1921, 4486, .295

Tommy Thevenow, 1924-1938, 4484, .294

The active career leader is Greg Maddux with 1750 (slugging .208). The position player leader is 37-year-old catcher Alberto Castillo with a career slugging percentage of .297 in 1173 PA.

The objective of a batter in baseball is to get on base. Most often one accomplishes this by putting the bat on the ball and getting a base hit. Sometimes, though, guys like Laynce Nix pop up for short time on an MLB roster and put up an 0-for-the-year line. They generally don't have that many plate appearances (Nix had 12), but they're still interesting.

Unsurprisingly, the top players in plate appearances for a season with no hits are pitchers. Here's the only five to ever reach 50 PA without a hit:

Bob Buhl, 85 PA, 1962

Bill Wight, 75, 1950

Ernie Koob, 57, 1916

Ron Herbel, 54, 1964

Karl Drews, 54, 1949

Brett Tomko led all players this year by going hitless in 37 plate appearances.

Let's throw pitchers out of the mix and get an idea of the most hapless position players in a single season. Here's the only guys at or above 25 PA.

Hal Finney (C), 35 PA, 1936

Larry Littleton (OF), 27 PA, 1981

Don Slaught (C), 26 PA, 1997

David Ortiz (DH/1B), 25 PA, 1999

The interesting thing about Finney is he didn't even manage to draw a walk or be hit by a pitch in 1936. He managed to drive in three runs and score three runs despite the .000 AVG, OBP and SLG. Fred Tauby (1937), Harry Redmond (1909) and Cliff Carroll (1888) are the only three other position players in major league history to reach even 20 PA without getting on base. Laynce Nix's 12 plate appearances this year tie him, with ten others, for the 28th most by a position player without getting on base in history.

Harry Redmond is atop the career leaderboard for most PA with an OBP of .000, but let's look at the list of guys who simply didn't get hits. Here's the players with 20 or more career PA sans hits:

Larry Littleton, 27

Mike Potter, 24

Cy Wright, 21

Harry Redmond, 20

Minor league veteran Josh Labandeira has a chance to join the list as he went 0-for-14 in 2004 for Montreal but still plays (he was in Albuquerque this year for the Marlins).

To finish off this entry, the player with the lowest career batting average above .000 was Skeeter Shelton, a Yankees centerfielder in 1915 who put up a 1-for-40 career line. He had a .025 average, a .071 OBP (2 walks), and a .025 SLG to give him a whopping .096 OPS.